The Chumscrubber
Directed by	Arie Posin
Produced by	Lawrence Bender Bonnie Curtis
Written by	Screenplay: Zac Stanford Story: Arie Posin Zac Stanford
Starring	See cast
Music by	James Horner
Editing by	Arthur Schmidt
Distributed by	Go Fish Pictures (US)
Release date(s)	August 26, 2005
Running time	108 minutes
Language	English
Budget	US$10,000,000[1]
Gross revenue	US$351,401

The Chumscrubber is a 2005 dark comedy film directed by Arie Posin and written by Posin and Zac Stanford, starring an ensemble cast. The film focuses on the lack of communication between teenagers and their parents, and the prevalence of prescription drugs in American society. The title of the film refers to a character that helps his friends to survive in a superficial world by keeping things authentic and is portrayed in form of a video game omnipresent in the teenagers' lives, in which a post-apocalyptic hero carries his severed head in his hand as he fights the forces of evil.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Themes 4 Production 5 Release 5.1 Box office 5.2 Home media 6 Reception 6.1 Critical response 6.2 Awards 7 Soundtrack 7.1 Track listing 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Plot

One day in the fictional town Hillside in Southern California, the supplier of antidepressant medication to the students at the local high school, Troy Johnson (Josh Janowicz), commits suicide. Troy's friend Dean Stifle (Jamie Bell), who found the body, is prescribed further antidepressants by his father Bill (William Fichtner), a psychiatrist. When he returns to school, he is antagonized by drug dealers Billy (Justin Chatwin) and Lee (Lou Taylor Pucci), who were supplied by Troy. Their friend Crystal Falls (Camilla Belle) flirts with Dean, but he soon realizes that her true intentions are for Dean to retrieve the remaining drugs in Troy's home and give them to her, Billy and Lee, and he refuses to cooperate. To force Dean to procure the drugs, Billy and Dean plan to kidnap Dean's brother Charlie (Rory Culkin) as a ransom, but they end up kidnapping Charlie Bratley (Thomas Curtis) instead of Charlie Stifle.

The kidnappers hold Charlie Bratley – whose parents are still unaware that he is missing – overnight at Crystal's home, and Dean eventually agrees to go to Troy's home to find the drugs. As Dean delivers the drugs, though, it is revealed that his brother replaced the pills with a bag of their mother Allie's (Allison Janney) vitamins. After Billy starts a fight with Dean, Dean is arrested and narrates his unbelievable story to Officer Lou Bratley (John Heard), who happens to be Charlie Bratley's father. Bill increases Dean's prescription of antidepressants after he is released.

The next day is Troy's memorial service and the wedding of Mayor Michael Ebbs (Ralph Fiennes) to Charlie Bratley's mother Terri (Rita Wilson). Lou finally realizes that his son was the kidnapped victim and heads out to look for him, without the help of his ex-wife Terri. Now at Billy's house, Crystal asks him to stop the kidnapping scheme, but he does not comply. She goes to Dean's house for help, but finds him hallucinating about Troy's death and finally expressing his grief. Meanwhile, a paranoid Lee tries to stab and kill Charlie Bratley to avoid being caught, but Charlie fights back and slices the knife through Billy's eye. Billy runs out into the street, screaming in pain, and is hit by Lou's police car.

Dean goes into Troy's memorial, where all of the visitors are intoxicated by Troy's antidepressants, which Charlie Stifle put into Allie's casserole. Troy's mother Carrie (Glenn Close) discloses to him that she never knew her own son. Dean tells her about Troy, and she thanks him. Billy is later sent to prison, while Lee gets acquitted. A closing voiceover explains that Dean and Crystal "escape together", and they are shown kissing.

[edit] Cast

• Jamie Bell plays Dean Stifle, a teenage outsider and the film's protagonist. He refuses to face his grief over his best friend's suicide, instead choosing to numb his feelings with drugs.
• Camilla Belle plays Crystal Falls, Dean's rebellious classmate. Unlike her friends, she feels sympathy for Dean and is reluctant to partake in the plans to kidnap his brother.
• Justin Chatwin plays Billy, a drug dealer at Dean's high school who was formerly supplied by Troy. He dreams to join the air force after graduation, but his fight with Charlie Bratley leaves him with impaired vision.
• Glenn Close plays Carrie Johnson, Troy's devastated mother. She tries to mask her grief with a cheerful persona, and continually guilts her neighbors by telling them bluntly that she does not blame them for Troy's death.
• Rory Culkin plays Charlie Stifle, Dean's younger brother. He spends most of his time on the family couch playing video games.
• Thomas Curtis plays Charlie Bratley, the 13-year-old son of Officer Lou Bratley and his ex-wife Terri. Having been largely ignored by his negligent mother, at the end of the film he is sent to live with Lou.
• William Fichtner plays Bill Stifle, Dean's psychiatrist father who uses his Dean as the subject of his books. Though he makes life's decisions always looking for potential new material, his book sales turn out to be disappointing.
• Ralph Fiennes plays Michael Ebbs, the mayor of Hillside and Terri Bratley's fiancé. After spilling paint in the shape of a dolphin, he becomes infatuated with dolphins and paints them all over his house; at the end of the film, he resigns from politics and becomes an artist.
• John Heard plays Lou Bratley, a police officer and Charlie Bratley's father. He cannot let go of his previous marriage with Terri, and finds satisfaction in giving her copious parking tickets.
• Allison Janney plays Allie Stifle, Dean's overworked mother. She initially struggles to sell her VeggiForce vitamins, but by the end of the film, she has found success and VeggiForce has become something of a cult.
• Josh Janowicz plays Troy Johnson, Dean's best friend and the supplier of prescription drugs to the student body at his high school. After his suicide, he appears frequently in Dean's hallucinations.
• Carrie-Anne Moss plays Jerri Falls, Crystal's laidback mother. She is obsessed with Terri Bratley's interior design work, but cannot catch her attention until she tells Terri that her son was at her house.
• Lou Taylor Pucci plays Lee Parker, Billy's smart but timid friend who often succumbs to peer pressure. His conservative parents pressure him about his schoolwork, hoping for him to get into a good college.
• Rita Wilson plays Terri Bratley, a successful interior designer and Charlie's mother. She grows increasing frustrated and demanding as her wedding to Michael approaches, and by the end of the film her design efforts have become less fruitful.

[edit] Themes

The title of the film refers to a video game character, "The Chumscrubber", who helps his friends to survive in a superficial world by keeping things authentic, and is portrayed as a post-apocalyptic hero, carrying his severed head in his hand as he fights the forces of evil. The Chumscrubber's world was intended to be a reflection of the Hillside community, shown by the repetition of characters' lines in the video game; a voice in the game yells "Kill him! Stab him! Get him again!", the exact line said by Billy to Lee at the end of the film, urging him to stab Charlie Bratley.^[2] Producer Bonnie Curtis described the character as "this sub-human monster the kids feel they are becoming".^[3] Posin commented that "the Chumscrubber is everything that that community has suppressed or denied or tried to ignore, and [...] the idea that the collective denial of the community as a whole finally gives birth to a character that will not be ignored".^[4]

Posin stated that one theme of the film is that "the adults in this world tend to be immature or childish and the kids tend to be very mature and adult and sophisticated for their age".^[2] He shot the teenage characters slightly below eye level to create the impression of looking up at an adult, and shot the adults slightly above eye level as if the viewer were looking down at a child.^[2] He said that hypocrisy was "at the top of the list" of the themes he wanted to explore in the story.^[5] While all of the adults in the film are attempting to live perfect lives, they cannot see that their children are driven to suicide, antidepressant addiction and kidnapping – for instance, Terri is so obsessed with her upcoming wedding that she does not realize her son is missing.^[5]

The film features dolphins as a recurring motif. Michael forms an obsession with dolphins and paints them all over his house, the street plan of Hillside is shown to form the shape of a dolphin at the end of the film. Nathan Baran of Hybrid Magazine was frustrated by the lack of explanation of the motif, saying: "Never are dolphins discussed by anyone else to have any meaning whatsoever. [...] What is the significance of the dolphin as an image? [...] it is a completely arbitrary image awkwardly stuffed with forced meaning".^[6] Posin saw Hillside's formation of a dolphin shape as "beauty and order to the chaos", illustrating Michael's belief in deep beauty where everybody else finds chaos.^[4]

[edit] Production

While working at a Hollywood talent agency, for ten years Posin had been writing scripts "trying to break in[to]" the film industry when he decided that he would rather be a director than a screenwriter.^[2] Posin asked writer Zac Stanford to write the screenplay for The Chumscrubber based on Posin's idea.^[2] Because they collaborated on the story, Posin later described the film as "rooted somewhere between" his own memories of growing up in suburbia and Stanford's upbringing in a small town in the Pacific Northwest.^[7] Posin and Stanford had originally planned to shoot the film with their own money. Posin's girlfriend suggested that he send the script to five producers; one, Lawrence Bender, responded and passed the script on to his partner Bonnie Curtis.^[2] Posin and the producers brought the project to around sixty uninterested production companies before sufficient funds for the US$10 million budget^[1] were raised and production began.^[2]

Posin considered numerous other actors for the lead role of Dean before he decided to cast Jamie Bell. Auditions for the role spanned over a year, and Posin said that he met "probably every young actor in Hollywood between a certain age".^[8] For the role of Crystal, Posin sought a beautiful but fragile actress. He chose Camilla Belle after she auditioned, and according to him, "She just was the character".^[4] Posin wanted an actor similar to Ralph Fiennes to play Michael, but was surprised when Fiennes himself agreed to be in the film.^[2] Justin Chatwin, a Billy Wilder fan, was drawn to the script after hearing that Posin had trained with Wilder.^[9] Ben Kingsley and Robin Williams were set to star in the film at different points in pre-production.^[1]

Principal photography of The Chumscrubber began in April 2004 and lasted for 30 days.^[10][5] Filming locations included Valencia, Los Angeles and Santa Clarita of California,^[11] as well as two soundstages.^[5]

[edit] Release

[edit] Box office

The Chumscrubber opened in the United States on August 5, 2005, playing in 28 theaters. It earned US$28,548 on its opening weekend, ranking 59th at the box office. It closed after two weeks in release with a total domestic gross of $52,597.^[12] The film's highes-grossing overseas releases were in Australia with $96,696, Germany with $81,323, and Greece with $71,100.^[13] It earned only £36 from its single-weekend release in the United Kingdom, meaning that only six people paid for a ticket.^[14] With a total foreign gross of $298,804, the film's total worldwide gross was $351,401.^[12]

[edit] Home media

The film was released on DVD in Region 1 on January 10, 2006. The special features included on the disc are: an audio commentary from Arie Posin, a 12-minute "making-of" featurette, and 10 deleted and extended scenes.^[15]

[edit] Reception

[edit] Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 34% based on 58 reviews.^[16]. The consensus is: "This derivative poke at suburbia falls short of delivering a scathing indictment of upper middle-class disconnect." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 43% based on the reviews of 12 critics.^[17]

Richard Roeper describes it as "part Donnie Darko part American Beauty ... there's even a little Desperate Housewives in there" and he praised the film for "good performances and strong writing" while noting it was strongly influenced by other sources and told in a surreal way.^[18] Carina Chocano of the LA Times similarly described it saying the film "could be mistaken for the secret love child of Donnie Darko and Desperate Housewives" ^[19]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine was unapologetic and describing the film as "an appallingly clumsy and stupid take on drugs, kidnapping and suicide in suburbia".^[20]

[edit] Awards

The film won the Audience Award for best film in Main Competition at the Moscow Film Festival. 

[edit] Soundtrack

The Chumscrubber: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack by Various Artists
Released	October 18, 2005 (2005-10-18)
Length	55:16
Label	Lakeshore Records
Producer	Chris Douridas
Professional reviews
Allmusic [21] SoundtrackNet (positive) [22]

The film's original score was composed by James Horner. Though Horner's previous work comprised mostly high-budget studio films – including Titanic (1997), Braveheart (1995), The Mask of Zorro (1998) and Apollo 13 (1995) – producer Bonnie Curtis approached him to score The Chumscrubber because "You never know until you ask." Horner agreed after seeing an early cut of the film. He and Posin spent five days on a soundstage, experimenting with different musical arrangements. Posin described the final product as "dramatic with a wink and a smile to it".^[3]

[edit] Track listing

1. "Our House" – Phantom Planet
2. "Bridge to Nowhere" – The Like
3. "Run" – Snow Patrol
4. "Pure Morning" – Placebo
5. "Oblivion" – Annetenna
6. "Spreading Happiness All Around" – James Horner
7. "Kidnapping the Wrong Charlie" – James Horner
8. "Dolphins" – James Horner
9. "Pot Casserole" – James Horner
10. "Digging Montage" – James Horner
11. "Parental Rift/The Chumscrubber" – James Horner
12. "Not Fun Anymore..." – James Horner
13. "A Confluence of Families" – James Horner
14. "The End" – James Horner

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Chumscrubber

• The Chumscrubber at the Internet Movie Database
• The Chumscrubber at Allmovie
• The Chumscrubber at Rotten Tomatoes